


I Can Fix That

by CousinNick



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Based on the Book and Movie "Holes", M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-29
Updated: 2014-01-29
Packaged: 2018-01-10 11:28:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1159169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CousinNick/pseuds/CousinNick
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Marco wanted to forever smooth away his beloveds tears until the end of time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Can Fix That

**Author's Note:**

> This is a Drabble Carsan and I made a week or so ago when we watched Holes, and as you can probably tell, it is a JeanMarco au based upon the Movie "Holes" and the relationship of Sam and Katharine.

Things weren’t so lonely when one had yellow spotted lizards for company.  
  
Marco had learned that quite easily in his awaited time being dead.  
  
It wasn’t that it was tough. The blistering sun above didn’t bother him so much and the lake’s waves had all sunken into the sand or had drifted up in the biggest clouds you had ever seen. He still had his shoes, though they were collected with the mud of hard work and onion patch soil and the back of his head hurt something awful sometimes, though he accounted that to being the cowardly way he was shot. But no, he wasn’t as lonely as he was pining.  
  
Pining for the one that he knew he always loved since he first came into town with his little rickety buck wagon pulled by his even littler long eared mule. Jean must have been about only eighteen and already a teacher to the young population of Green Lake. Before Marco laid eyes on the blond, he himself used to only sell sometimes in Green Lake, Texas, preferring the customers along the West side of the lake to the East – the West was kinder, gentler to one of his skin color and sale. Back then people didn’t even care to see a young man like Marco read let alone woo a white man with pretty if not lonesome ballads of tragic love like that found in Annabelle Lee.  
  
But Marco was a smart lad, having taught himself to read at a young age, taking any books that white people would throw at him to ease their pity for the black man. He had two copies of the 1849 Farmers’ Almanac and an assortment of other pamphlets and he was damn near proud of it. But ever since he met that lanky blond with the darkest hair of chestnut at the nape of his neck and eyes like the fresh spun honey that his father used to collect in jars, Marco wanted to know and learn from Jean more than any book the freckled boy had ever had in his possession.  
  
But Marco knew Jean was not a book, not a possession to be read over and over again and imagine so many stories to fit his fictional character – all that Marco knew of Jean was made up in his head. Jean was his own story and Marco wanted to be a part of it. It was when Marco saw the other leaning against a tree when he was no more than perhaps nineteen, his feet sunken into the wet March grass and reading a book by Jane Austen that Marco knew he had to read everything that the other loved. If he could understand how that school teacher made such a calmed expression while reading an author known for romanticism, then Marco could better know how to make that same contented expression befall the other’s face from the beauty of a romance absence of inked lines in a book and from his heart-strung words himself.  
  
That was the day Marco stopped selling his onions to the West and made the extra three hour trip across the lake on his little boat Mary Lou to the East of Green Lake. All for the love of a white man who sighed softly with every page turned of all the books he read.  
  
Little did Marco know that he was not the only one who had become infatuated with the smoothed eyes and smug voice of the school teacher with hair that looked as smooth as corn silk and a wit of reasoning as sharp as a bullwhip.  
  
That was the reason Marco’s bones were buried under the lake sediment and dried sand at this very minute, his rib cage pressed up to the sky like glistening ivory tusks thrust into the sun.  
  
It was a race for affection and Marco had been tending to the other’s heart longer than that son of a bitch who’s Pappy owned the entire lake, and yet Marco was already toeing in dangerous waters.  
  
Jean had taken a fancy to Marco and the black man was not at all unconvinced of this, just by the fact that Jean would send Marco home with as much of the other’s jarred spiced that he could carry along with a blushing smile was enough to confirm Marco’s heart was in the right and wanted place.  
  
But love in a black man’s heart didn’t mean nothin’ when the love he had was for a white man. A white man that had attracted the attention of another man. A man who’s affection for Jean was like a businessman who lusted after a golden wrist-watch. Something fancy for him to wear about his arm and to get rid of when the thing stopped ticking so prettily and began to bore him.  
  
Marco wouldn’t let that man treat Jean like an accessory. He just wouldn’t.  
  
It was on the night that Jean kissed him, his cheeks wet with tears from a heart wrenching novel passage he had been mulling over and his lips soft and tasting like peaches that Marco knew the other had made his choice and that from now on they would belong to one another willingly in love.  
  
It was also the last night Marco ever saw Jean before his body sunk down onto the boards of his boat by a sure-intended bullet.  
  
...  
  
1892, Green Lake, Texas. The setting and death of a beloved outlaw.  
  
...  
  
“Today is the daaaay.” He sang to himself, his voice partly all choked up from the heat of the air and absence of use of his lungs. He could barely contain the excitement that shook and unnerved him, though it was weighed down some with the pressing thoughts that cooled his mind at what this day meant. He tried to fix himself up, but it wasn’t as if he died in his Sunday best so there was only so much he could do with the fine soft curling of his black hair and his dust wiped brown face that Jean used to caress sometimes when they read to each other by the light of kerosene lamp. Authors like Charlotte Bronte and Henry David Thoreau spoken in Jean’s delightful voice that sent loving shivers down Marco’s spine.  
  
Marco was almost lost in thought then, trying to remember the exact way one of Jean’s favorite quotes in the thinned yellow pages of a book he always held dear went. In vain have I struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. “You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.” Marco smiled as he whispered the words mostly to himself and partly to the lizards that flopped and rolled on top of his old shoes that had been patched up almost as many times as they had been worn. But his thoughts of love and verses that he could plainly see like the rivers of white that made up Jean’s loping cursive upon his favored chalkboard were disrupted by the holder of his affections himself.  
  
Heavy laden with a big old trunk that was bursting to the brim with gold and paper bank notes and jewels stolen round the necks and fingers of those of wealthier standing, Marco watched his beloved drag forward his horde.  
  
Just because he had been dead for the longest time did not mean Marco had not but a clue as to what the other had been doing. Marco spent most of his time by the shores of the dried up lake, drifting like mist along the parched banks, pretending to be the long lost waves of some place farther sunken in than Atlantis, some place like Green Lake.  
  
As soon as that bullet went through his skull and his boat was swarming in the lake water and his blood, it seemed like his Jean had fed the fires of revenge deep in his very southern soul.  
  
It was a fast transition for Marco, from flesh and bone to spirit and mourning. The day he died he remembered skulking softly through the eerily quiet town that smelt of his death and the charred smoke of the schoolhouse. It wouldn’t be until a week later of him wandering the plots at the graveyard and even around the outskirts of the poplar and aspen forest that he came to the conclusion he was never buried, that after he had been shot the felons who did him in capsized his boat, himself still in it, unceremoniously dumping his body in the lake like some damn dead dog. He knew Jean saw as much from the way his gaze looked dead to Marco on the morn after the murder and the desecration of their love.  
  
That morning when the smoke was cold and hazy and hung in the Texan blue sky and his own head was weight with the troublesome burden of being dead, Marco made his way to town to inquire silently as to the whereabouts of his lover, if Jean escaped as Marco desperately wished to believe.  
  
He didn’t need to hang by the horse’s hitching post at the Sheriff’s own place of business for long for his eyes to feast upon what had happened to his lover. On the night all hell broke loose for Jean and Marco, the Sheriff was the one to get drunk on cheap honeyed whisky and do nothing to stop the lynching mob ablaze with torches. The only action the good Sheriff took that night was to grab at Jean’s waist in an attempt to steal more than just kisses when the young wide eyed and scared teacher ran to the jailhouse screaming that the school had been set on fire.  
  
Needless to say, Marco was not surprised to see that the Sheriff would be the first to warrant Jean’s wrath. With a gun that Marco vaguely knew was Jean’s fathers from the times Jean and him would go out quietly and in secrecy to shoot birds by the wild sunflowers, Jean made his way to the Sheriff’s office bright and early the day after Marco’s death.  
  
Marco observed with widening eyes that his beloved was stone cold in face, skin drained and paled even more by the attire of vest and coat he wore – red as the blood Marco bled only a few hours ago.  
  
Marco himself wasn’t there to see the gun go off but he was present to see Jean, unwavering in strength and quietness, grab at the lead of his palomino gelding and swing upon the snorting and practically snarling beast. If the resounding gunshot the other made in killing the Sherriff in cold justified blood did not alert the apathetic citizens of Green Lake, the whooping war cry that left Jean’s throat as he stormed away on his horse surely did.  
  
When Marco, still startled by the brevity and urgency his beloved left burned into his mind like the color of his attire, finally wavered over to the door of the sheriff’s office, he felt his deadened voice that held no voice at all, tighten in his throat.  
  
The corpse of the heavily bearded man was lopsided against his chair, the face peppered with sweat from the hot Texan morning air lain almost sweetly at the desk. His forehead was stained red with a kiss.  
  
The name Kissin’ John Kirschtein, thus, was born.  
  
He had kept his ears and eyes open to anything pertaining to his “Kissin’ John Kirschtein”, a name that Marco would sometimes whisper to himself when he was alone – though he was always alone save for the lizards – and smile like he knew some secret, which he did. He had been the only one to kiss Kissin’ John Kirschtein and live to tell the tale... somewhat.  
  
So it was not a surprise that he knew the on goings of his vengeful beloved. His and Jean’s kiss in the schoolhouse oh so ago, sweetened with time and simpler things, had been a warrant on Marco’s head, a price he did damn well pay. Jean’s kiss was the kiss of death and he played the part of the reaper well, if Marco had anything to say about it. The crumpled funeral announcements of those his beloved hunted down with cold steel, a wild hearted gelding, and a tube of red wax for his lips often times washed up into the basing of the slowly sinking lake, allowing Marco a look at the life his lover now was forced to live because of the hands that would shoot a black man for stealing the kiss of a white man.  
  
He had been watching the town, until they all left, that is, till this day. Till the day his beloved outlaw, his beloved schoolteacher, his beloved Jean came back to him. “He looks good in red,” Marco said wistfully, suddenly, in the face of the other, only the lizards being able to hear him.  
  
He watched Jean dig at the coarse ground with a half splintering handled shovel, the only thing to his name now besides the stolen gold. Breaking a sweat after a foot had been dug, his eyes still remained cool, cold, and lonesome – a sight that pained Marco.  
  
He made slow work of the hole, shedding his bright red silk saloon vest and digging till night at the walls and width till it could hold the chest and therefore all his pain.  
  
Once it was deep enough and to his liking he dumped the heavy trunk in the gaping mouth of the hole, piling it high with dirt and smoothing it down with the tip of his toed boot.  
  
“May whoever finds this be worth it...” He mumbled softly, snatching back at his vest and shrugging the thing back on, wiping absently at his lips that were still stained a slight red from all the murdering and kissing he had been doing.  
  
He blearily looked around him and noticed quite quickly that some lizards had begun to encroach upon him. Jean smiled softly to the little poisonous creatures that Marco always told him were misunderstood. “Let me just sit for a spell, before my real sleep.” He murmured his plea and the lizards obeyed, trailing a ways behind him as he trudged through the early morning that bled into the unforgiveable hot afternoon.  
  
Finding refuge and his professed final resting place, he laid against the dead shell of a boat, a boat he recognized all too well. With a wry smile and a mind full of memories of when Marco and him would stick their feet over the edge of the boat during the May lake swelling season and raise an awful racket trying to splash each other, he decided this was as good a place as any to die. Even though it hurt him so.  
  
“Marco....” He softly breathed out, slumping against the wood like the tired man he had become.  
  
Marco walked toward Jean without a second thought, like a wraith who wished to look upon the face of a loved one for the last time before they departed from this world. Marco was stubborn though, he would not go without Jean.  
  
Moving towards his beloved who was laying on his back, letting the sun fry him, Marco felt a sudden swelling of his heart as he gazed down at the man he still loved all these years. Jean was beautiful even now, Marco thought.  
  
He could hear some lizards chirping behind him thoughtfully.  
  
“Yeah. I like him too.” Marco agreed with a slight smile, turning his attention back to Jean when he then heard that normally smooth voice now cracked from heat and sadness, sigh. Marco frowned and felt a sweet sadness again take over him.  
  
“It's so hot, Marco. But I feel so cold.” Jean sighed once more and Marco's heart ached for the other, kneeling down beside him, just to be close. Jean was already so near death, he could, if he calmed his gaze, see Marco, in quick flashes.  
  
Suddenly shown to the blond, Marco was there before him and Jean's tired eyes softened like they haden't in years. “Marco…” He murmured, a slight curl to his lips that forms a smile that his sweetheart returns.  
  
“I can fix that.” Marco whispered and in an instant Jean cooed, stroking his lover’s cheek so very gently. Then there erupted the sound of staggering footsteps, a man barking out like a shrill dog, “Where's the loot?”, and suddenly Marco was gone.  
  
Jean, still smiling pleasantly, turned lightly to the man with the gun, the outlaw’s hand still caressing, though now his fingers touched only the coarseness of the wind and not the softness of his lover’s face.  
  
In a flash Jean moved only with the slight flick of his wrist, the readying sound of his own colt python revolver clicking sharp in his weary mind, startling and purposeful. Jean barely stirred his finger on the trigger, feeling so close to his happiness and too far from his anger. Marco was here, was close, and so now he himself couldn’t even feel the bubble of rage he once had for the harried man before him in his gut any longer, not while he's so near to his longing death. The man that pursued him when Jeans heart was already taken, the man that sentenced Marco to death, the man that Jean despised.  
  
“I've been waitin' for ya',” Jean hummed, his voice almost playful though there is no warmth to its tremor, that was killed long ago by the man now looking down at his barreled shotgun at Jean.  
  
Honeyed eyes sharp, Jean curled his lip with disgust. “I ain't gonna' kill you...” He mumbled, throwing his gun down upon the ground hotter than the brimstone in hell. The scrambling of the sunburnt woman dashing for the gun betrayed the hot silence that the lake had always seemed to want to make now.  
  
“Where's the loot?!” The man tried again and Jean couldn’t even make a joyful smile at the thought of denying this man again everything he ever wanted. He was just too tired. “There ain't no loot...” He trailed off but that shotgun just rattled in the other’s hands.  
  
“Don't bull, you've robbed every bank from Hell to Houston.” The man Jean had hated for years, smiled. There was a silver tooth in his gaping hole of a mouth now, Jean noticed.  
  
The girl with the pretty red flyaway hair then took her turn at taunting Jean. “We saw you walking by with a shovel, Mr. Jean Kirschtien.” She had put emphasis on Jean's long forgotten name just to spite him. That schoolteacher was long dead, and Jean didn't give his old student the satisfaction of being surprised any longer. He tsked.  
  
“Honey, you were such a good student.” He looked over at what used to be the embodiment of his hatred, now Jean just pitied him. “You must've married him for his money.” He let out a dry laugh that threatened to expire into a cough laced with pain.  
  
“Well it's all gone now. Dried up with the lake.” She suddenly shrieked. “Hasn't rained here since the day they killed Marco.” Her voice warbled only to end with a pause of frantic consideration. Who knew what Jean would do when Marco was brought up. But he didn't move. He was tired, so very, very tired. Jean knew Marco was right there, and Jean could barely wait to kiss those sweet lips again.  
  
Pressed on by Jean’s nonchalant smile, the woman continued, her voice strained with its troubles that wracked her bodily, making her shake as if she had heatstroke. Her husband’s counting down the seconds grated into the background, shotgun shaking.  
  
“Now you better tell him what he wants, he's a desperate man!” She shouted, her voice so much stronger than Jean remembered when he was teaching her arithmetic all those years ago. His smile fell from his face, eyes not menacing but instead open, inquisitive. After the word three was spoken with a smile, that tooth shining in the sun, Jean raised his palms up to the other man in a mock surrender of defeat.  
  
“Go on, kill me. The lake goes on for miles.” He chanced a slight smile, the man returning the grin only with a sneering streak to it. “I ain't gonna kill you, but by the time I'm finished with you, you gon' wish you was dead.”  
  
Jean, teeth white though his face was brushed with the dust of the dried up lake and hard lined with the deeds he’d done, let out a soft chuckle.  
  
“I've been wishin' I was dead for a long time,” He said, eyes settled on the horizon, gaze not entirely there. With a look that breathed with finality, Jean turned to the decrepit pair. “You, your children, and your children’s children, will dig for the next one hundred years and you will never find it.” He spoke, his hoarse voice like a wistful song, only interrupted by the skitter and shriek of a thorny crowned yellow spotted lizard that scrambled out from under the sun dried boards from Marco’s boat. In an instant the silver toothed man jumped and in a frenzy shot at the viper-like reptile. Jean just laughed softly from the noise.  
  
From a short distance away, wringing his hat in his hands before topping it above his head and fixing the brim, Marco took a steadying breath. Now was the time, he hummed to himself. “When you bite him, please, be as gentle as you can...” Marco whispered to the lizard that had hissed in the face of the three persons flung about the boat. Frightened by the shuttering blast of the shotgun’s bullets to the side of it, the lizard scampered into a hole in the boat, spooked but unscathed. Marco cooed softly to the thing, hoping his voice would reach past the wood, telling it not to be afraid, she wouldn't be the one to die, no, it was Jean’s turn for his pain to end.  
  
Jean crooned sweetly to the scaled thing in its hiding, holding the wriggling hissing animal in his hand. “C'mere sweetheart.” He spoke softly, and the lizard calmed instantly at his voice, its struggling subsided.  
  
Marco's smile was a thin line, but it was there as he pressed his thumbs tighter to his hat. Jean himself sent one last look to the pair before him with their greedy sunken faces staring back at him with anticipated horror. Jean’s own eyes sealed their curse. “Start diggin'.” He whispered.  
  
Marco nodded to the little lizard who then sunk her black teeth deep and fast into Jean's wrist. Marco knew she was being gentle, he had seen how vicious they could truly be, but still Jean's body tensed. His arm that was bit was shaking, the venom turning the veins around the bite as black as the coal colored trains Jean robbed.  
  
Jean inhaled sharply, but he didn't cry out, he wouldn't give the two people watching in horror and anger the satisfaction. Instead he laughed, he laughed with the last breath of air that was in his lungs. He could feel his body slumping against the wood of the boat, but his mind and soul were leaving his corpse slowly now and the last thing he felt before dying was a little scaly nuzzle against his quickly numbing cheek from the blessed creature that gave him his relief.  
  
Then suddenly he was standing upright, he felt light, he felt clean. “Where are you, Marco?” he called out softly, hoping to disguise his panic and smooth it over as best as he could. A warm hand closed around his wrist.  
  
Gentle warmth seemed into Jean’s form as he felt Marco’s thumb swipe over the punctured holes the lizard had made on Jean’s skin, the scaly darling still perched slightly underneath the chin of Jean’s corpse that would be left for the buzzards or would be dragged by the two before the cadaver for a sheriff’s reward.  
  
“I'm right here, always been here, always been looking out for you.” Marco spoke, his voice wobbly. He knew he would always be sad that this day had arrived, but he still couldn't keep down the elation with being with his lover again, free from their pained separation.  
  
Eyes that softened to gentleness looked into Marco’s own gaze, Jean’s hands returning to their loving caress of the other’s face. Marco leaned into that touch, his tears sliding down his face and he knew Jean was still amazed that the dead could cry. “I can fix that...” Jean smiled, his voice beautiful to Marco. Marco laughed, the sound wet with his tears as Jean closed his eyes softly, leaning into him with a sweetness that Marco had yearned for.


End file.
